Do We Really Need More Jihadists?

On Monday, GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump created a political firestorm by releasing a statement, “calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what’s going on.”

While it should be self-evident that allowing unvetted mass immigration from Muslim-majority countries is a formula for national security disaster (look no further than Europe for proof), Trump’s statement identifies an even more important problem: the fact that our leaders in Washington have not been able to “figure out what’s going on” with respect to the global jihad movement – and what it will take for us to defeat it, before the jihadists destroy us.

advertisement

Mr. Trump has clearly picked up on a conviction increasingly shared by millions of Americans. They have begun to realize that the Obama administration has long been downplaying, misrepresenting and mishandling a threat more and more of us see plainly.

The killers who plotted and executed the massacre in San Bernardino are no different than Islamic supremacists the world over. For them, terror is one of the tools used to advance an agenda aimed at imposing worldwide the repressive politico-legal-military code they call shariah and establishing a global Caliphate. Other techniques employed by the granddaddy of all modern jihadist groups, the Muslim Brotherhood, involve more stealthy efforts to penetrate and subvert from within our civil society and governing institutions.

We must understand shariah and the ideological impetus it provides for our enemies’ actions. We must also recognize its inherent and unalterable incompatibility with Western civilization. And we must take action to keep jihadis from threatening our lives – and our freedoms – in furtherance of their stated goal: installing shariah worldwide.

In his statement, Trump cited a poll of Muslims in America commissioned by the Center for Security Policy earlier this year, revealing the disturbing fact that large percentages of those who responded (51%) agreed that, “Muslims in America should have the choice of being governed according to shariah.”

Even more troubling, nearly a quarter of the Muslims polled believed that, “It is legitimate to use violence to punish those who give offense to Islam by, for example, portraying the prophet Mohammed.”

Those who don’t like the poll’s results have questioned its methodology. Yet, opt-in, online surveys are used routinely to gauge the views of populations like American Muslim that are relatively small and hard-to-reach. In particular, major survey organizations like SurveyMonkey & Harris Interactive that are relied upon and quoted extensively use the same approach.

For its part, the industry trade association, the American Association of Public Opinion Research (AAPOR), has issued a study of online, opt-in survey panels. It states: “There are times when a nonprobability online panel is an appropriate choice, as there may be survey purposes and topics where the generally lower cost and unique properties of Web data collection is an acceptable alternative to traditional methods.”

Examples of other surveys using the same online, opt-in panel methodology include:

A Cronkite News pollconducted as part of a project focused the Sikh religious community.

The Center’s poll of U.S. Muslims, however, seems to have touched a particularly sensitive nerve, perhaps because it asked questions that other polling firms seem reluctant to ask. In addition, the results could signal that a significant portion of American Muslims hold views that reflect mainstream Islam’s shariah. Such views conflict dramatically with the Constitution and concepts of civil rights, are nevertheless reflective of the way mainstream Islam is practiced in many Muslim-majority countries.

The United States govenment has every right to determine which immigrants enter this country. And the fact is that some would-be immigrant aliens present a far greater threat than others.

Here are some of the options available to try to ensure that this threat is mitigated:

Defund the Obama administration’s breathtaking decision to allow into the United States aliens who have engaged in “limited” material support for terrorism had “limited” contact with its perpetrators.

Deny any funding for the president to bring in not just refugees, but anyone coming in under any immigration program from Syria and Iraq, given that we cannot perform adequate screening on them, until such time as Congress reauthorizes such spending.

Likewise, deny any funding for the president to bring in via any immigration program from other nations whose traditions of Islamic supremacism makes the need for such vetting imperative. These would, presumably include those deemed by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement to be “Specially Designated Countries” (notably, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Libya, and Afghanistan). An exception could be made for aliens from Israel, provided the Israeli government deems them not to be a threat.

Provide the funds necessary for both the southern and northern border states’ governors to deploy their National Guard to secure our land frontiers unless and until other means of denying unauthorized access across them can be assured.

Include some variation of Texas Rep. Brian Babin’s Refugee Accountability National Security Act, which would place a moratorium on refugee resettlement until Congress deems the program has been adequately reviewed, as well as a Government Accountability Office audit of its costs. Even simply defunding all refugee resettlement from Syria would be a start, though the problem of jihadis posing as refugees extends far beyond Syria.

Include some version of the bill sponsored by House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican, which would restore control over how many refugees the U.S. admits each year to the legislative branch, where it belongs.

Eliminate funding for the so-called “voluntary agencies” (a.k.a. VolAgs) that are paid by-the-head to resettle refugees and, therefore, have become, as a practical matter, self-interested lobbies for expanding the number of refugees ad infinitum.

Restore U.S. control over whom we deem a refugee, ending the practice of allowing the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees to dictate who is eligible for resettlement here. This is especially imperative in light of the extraordinary influence over the High Commissioner apparatus (and the U.N. more generally) enjoyed the proto-Caliphate, multinational Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). That influence has contributed to the fact that, by some estimates, nine out of 10 “refugees” being admitted here under the present arrangement are Muslims.

As previously recommended by then-Sen. Joe Lieberman, revoke the citizenship of those Americans who join foreign terror organizations by banning the expenditure of funds to admit such individuals back into the United States after they have traveled abroad.

Given the Islamist massacre in San Bernardino, not to mention the burgeoning growth of violent and stealthy jihadist activity around the world since 2011, America must admit what so many of its leaders refuse to say: Jihad and the hateful ideology of shariah that undergirds it are problems we must address, and must address now.